The U.S. Is Crushing Its Clean Energy Forecasts

In a February 2007 report, the United States Department of Energy made thirty-year predictions for the country's energy usage and production. As Statista's infographic below shows, using data from the non-profit international environmental pressure group Natural Resources Defense Council, these forecasts have so far been smashed.

In terms of the energy mix, power generated from coal was 45 percent beneath the forecast while clean(er) alternatives natural gas and wind/solar power saw overshoots of 79 and 383 percent, respectively.

Renewable energy infrastructure is also expanding at a much faster rate than was thought ten years ago. 2006's prediction for installed solar was a massive 4,813 percent shy of the 2016 reality. The U.S now also has installed wind capacity of 82 gigawatts, 361 percent more than had been hoped for.

In fact, energy consumption in total was also 17 percent lower than expected... which is odd and perhaps a better indication of the recovery-less recovery's reality?

The real story here is that this decline in energy usage is most likely due to the continued decline of the economy overall. If you want to reduce CO2, you can always make everyone so poor that they stop buying things and production crumbles. Also, "climate change" is caused by changes in solar activity, just sayen'.

But Congress doesn't want to make everyone poor (just American workers). In fact, Congress wants to give foreigners, entering the U.S. to work, a whopping pay raise:

"WASHINGTON: A key Congressional committee has voted to pass a legislation that proposes to increase the minimum salary of H-1B visa holders from $60,0000 to $90,000 and imposes a number of restriction on the work visa popular among IT professionals from India.

The Protect and Grow American Jobs Act (HR 170) - introduced by Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet Subcommittee Chairman Darrell Issa - was passed by the House Judiciary Committee during a markup hearing today morning.

They should LOWER salary requirements for H1B, but make them join the Army for two years. I would be all for war then. Send the H1B core to Africa, and see how they fare with Al Shebab. When silicon tits valley complains, then accuse them of being unpatriotic.

I'm getting a business going, which means that right now I hire or contract work out every time I get money to pay for it (at the start of a business you don't make any money, every dollar in goes right back out because so much has to get done). So, lets say that I have an American worker and a Chinese worker that both have the same skills and capacity. If the American asks for $70k a year, under the new law the Chinese guy cannot ask for $60k and get the job. The law forces his wage to be $90k, which makes him $20k more expensive.

So, in this case the American gets the job, and doesn't have to concern himself with wage competition until he is in the $100k range or so (extra paperwork/legal advice when hiring foreigners). If a foreign worker is pulling such a large salary, it also means he is a contributor to the economy, not a burden, and most nations give a green light to a contributor.

What this also means is that each of the foreign tech major kids have a 3 year OPT after school, which means they have three years to go from graduating to a $90k job, and if they fail they go home. The people who will be hurt the most are employers that rely on cheap H1-B labor, because this will explode their costs by 50%, and it will be a benefit to Americans who would be paid above H1-B salaries but below the new threshold.

Clearly not, it's an attempt to block.the cheap H1Bs, the majority of the annual allocation is grabbed by the big Indian outsourcing companies which use H1B to undercut the locals with cheap low-ability foreigners.Imagine if they tried to do that to say, the FIRE sector or law or medicine.The standard method is to bribe a midlevel corrupt manager to get the contract, then funnel in lots of useless Desi slaves as quickly as possible after laying off the locals or making them train their replacements. Additionally there is usually a push to remove any effective QA, for obvious reasons. The corrupt manager normally has to move on with their stuffed pockets, otherwise they get burned by the inevitable quality and productivity related blowback.How Outsourcing Companies Are Gaming the Visa Systemhttps://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/11/06/us/outsourcing-companies…

"The real story here is that this decline in energy usage is most likely due to the continued decline of the economy overall."

Partially, But:

(1). Demographics as boomers start to retire or consume less to save more for retirement.
(2) A lot more automation: Factories need fewer workers and thus reduction in transportation. Data Centers have embraced Virtualization: One Rack of Virtualization hosts can replace an an entire row of machine racks. Companies are shifting to the cloud, reducing the need for in-house servers.
(3) More workers working from home: Remote access to office systems, Traveling Salesman now use WebEx/Goto meeting instead of boarding a plane to demo a product.
(4) High fuel prices a decade ago, cause consumers to replace SUVs with sedans and crossover vehicles

Of course I don't Asia's energy consumption has decreased at all. What we don't consume (Oil/Coal) China gladly will.

"Also, "climate change" is caused by changes in solar activity, just sayen'."

Yup. Earth has been on a warming trend since the end of the ice age. Even if humans stopped releasing CO2, it still going to get warmer and probably will do so for the next 20K years.

THIS is a disaster. Idiotic pseudoscience based pseudo-religious condemnation of *exhailed air* (CO2) and the contortion of resources away from efficient markets (like: you make and buy the cheapest of undifferentiated goods which are epitomized by freaking ELECTRICITY) and instead, rush into the shackles of command-economy full-retardism.

Do not be fooled. This continues to cause vast unnecessary drain of capital. Terrible for America, it is good for the Rockefellers and the Saudis though.

you obviously havent been to central and west texas in the past 4 years. Thousands of wind turbines. They do not free sping, they change the pitch of the prop to controll speed. If they free spun, they would hit too high an rpm and break the shaft. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panther_Creek_Wind_Farm

Eh? You trying to say that the dozens of windmills I see every day aren't there? And the massive power lines lowering the value of my property aren't being run out to yet another new wind farm outside of town?Go for a drive through Sweetwater Texas and tell me that wind investment hasn't absolutely exploded. Can't throw a dead cat without hitting two of the bastards.

Wind and solar prices have fallen much more than faster than anticipated. The good news for consumers and soceity is that prices for wind and especially solar will drop dramatically in the future which means we will have energy deflation. Additionally, batteries will get better and cheaper with time, which means energy prices will get cheaper.